100% Sweet and Sour Truth

Category

Being The Best You

Today I looked in my body mirror in my bathroom, and I must have been standing there for 10 minutes before I realized….

In my head I had been tearing myself apart. I had been mentally body shaming myself without even realizing it.

Now I can sit here and blame society for my problems. Which don’t get me wrong, I feel that the general public, lack of good parenting, Tv, internet, porn, barbies, bad ex boyfriend/girlfriends, yada yada yada. They all add to the issue of what a woman feels she should look like.

But I’m going to do what I believe is right here…..

I’m going to start with myself.

Please believe I have had my fair share of garbage about how I look, thrown at me. I have had people tell me my face is flat, that I’m a Asian- but in a much more racist context, (even though my heritage is Native American) I have had an ex-boyfriend beat the living snot out of my daily all the while telling me that no one else would ever want me and that I could never do better than him, I’ve been told by many “mean girls” throughout my life that I am fat and ugly, I’ve had people comment on my clothing and how I suck at putting makeup on. I have been told that Ill always be unwanted and I’ve had family members constantly berate me because of my weight. I’ve heard people talk about me and say I’m weird because I’m adopted.

So believe me when I say that I am not preaching without experience.

No matter what anyone has ever said to me, pointed out about my body or my personality or what I was wearing or what I did or did not have…

I can think about all these instances right now and one thing those people never said to me….

THAT MY HEART WAS UGLY, or I was unkind, or that I didn’t care enough, or I was bad at helping homeless people, that I was stupid every time I cried because I couldn’t help every stray animal, or how awful of a person I was because I would and have given others the shirt off my back. That I’m a horrible person because I don’t lie or steal things that don’t belong to me, that I’m an idiot because I’ve sat with strangers and talked for hours when they seemed in desperate need or how much of a loser I am because I’ve had my husband pull the car over to help an elderly person cross the street or to shoo away and animal dangerously close to getting hit.

None of these people have booed me for being an organ donor if my life were to end, or how about loving two beautiful little boys with autism, learning how to put them first in all things. I’ve never heard these people curse me out for loving a man that had his own child and learning how to love him as my own. I have never heard anyone say that me loving another human being more than I could ever love myself, and trying everyday to be a better wife however I can…I have never heard anyone say that this makes me worthless.

I have never left my kids in the car alone, I have never chose drugs over anyone in my life. I have never killed anyone or abused an animal. I have never cleared out someones bank account or used them for money. I have never stolen a car, not even someones wallet.

I have never heard anyone tell me that the art I spend hours creating to express everything that is going on inside of me..so much that words are not enough..no one has ever dumped on that when it has brought some of them to tears. Not one has turned a blind eye to the stories I create with my hands. I have never been told I’m stupid for going back to college and getting my PCA/HHA, CNA, Medical Assisting Certificate. Or that my dream of becoming a Scientific Geneticist is ridiculous.

No one has ever scoffed at me for being selfless and going to work everyday to save peoples lives and help them be healthy. Not one person that I gave CPR has ever told me to kill myself or that I’m not good at my job.

I have never had anyone shoot down my dream of owning my own art gallery and using some of the profits to travel to places where they need help and actually helping them build houses, giving them medical attention and food. Sitting with them and really connecting with the way they live life.

I have sat and cried myself to sleep, I have listened to what people have said about me. I have thought about suicide. I even lost my brother to it. When my birth mother died, I didn’t have anyone to truly turn to and I dealt with depression, successfully on my own. I have dealt with the awful memories of my birth father hurting me in ways no father ever should I thought about giving up and if anyone knows how that feels, how much pain truly is inside someone when they are that close to quitting. ….

I deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder every single day. And I survive EVER SINGLE DAY.

AND I CANNOT RECALL ANYONE EVER TELLING ME I HAD TO LISTEN TO ANY OF THE CRAP ANYONE HAS EVER TRIED TO BURN IN MY BRAIN.

AND I WON’T….

So why should I allow MYSELF to say those things in my own damn head!!!

NO one can make me stop repeating the negative things in my head, be it from others or myself, but me….

So here’s to the women and men who find themselves believing what other people have to say about your weight, appearance, clothes, money, where you live, your family situation…

PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING THESE PEOPLE WOULDN’T WANT TO BE JUDGED ON, YET DECIDE TO BE ASSHOLES TO YOU ANYWAY…

Make a list right now in your head of everything you do that is good. All the times you’ve helped someone and all the positive qualities you posses….

Tell yourself how amazing you are and how you do not need to fit anyone else’s stigmas or stereotypes, you are not the words they say and you ARE NOT the words you hear from that little critic that lives inside your mind that kinda sounds like the assholes out here…

Well I for one have had a shit rest of the day since this mornings blog. My hair is a mess, I forgot to brush my teeth today so im sure my mouth is a bucket full of sunshine, my kids are hyper and I just finished a 10 minute job interview that I waited 2 hours for..and it didn’t go well.

I would like to think that being told I have a high quality resume and extremely qualified would be a good thing.

Turns out experience only brought a $9.00/hour offer to the table. Sorry sir, times are tough but NOT that tough. One thing my mother taught me was “Never dumb down your qualities to make it work for others.”

Anyways, my qualities are a little bit more expensive than that.

The support I was hoping to get from my husband…well there was alot of room for improvement. Being married can be a great thing. But if I’m being honest (which seems to make me alot more enemies than it does friends), today it just annoys me.

Annnd…I just burnt dinner and my kids are looking at me like im a lunatic for even putting it on a plate in front of them…the cherry to my icecream.

I don’t have enough energy today to look at the brightside. And thats ok. Being a good person requires some downtime. So for the rest of the night I would like to be by my grouchy self.

So dear readers..

I will leave you a random DID YOUKNOW and try my hardest to be cheery in the A.M. for tomorrows blog.

I remember in high school a teacher placed a paper on all of the students desks one day and asked us to fill it out for the first 30 minutes of class. She wanted us to really think about our answers and to be sure of them before we wrote them down. I remember flipping over the page and reading the heading.

WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN 10 YEARS?

I thought, “This is going to be easy.”

I sat there and racked my brain. 20 minutes went by and my paper was still empty, blank, white…nothing.

I can’t remember what I ended up writing down, but I do remember filling it out with some bogus words just to get it over with.

To this day that piece of paper has haunted me. In a way, like everything in life, this is a bittersweet thing. I think about that paper when I go to job interviews, I thought about it when I signed up for college (my second time around), I think about it when I plan for the future. Its somewhat of a motivation to think about what I would like to write on that piece of paper when the day is rough and I feel like giving up.

Yet, this paper has also influenced me negatively. Sometimes I feel like I am rushing through life. Like I have been missing out on actually being happy and in the moment, because the next time someone hands me a paper like that I want to be prepared.

I don’t think my teacher had any idea that this small scrap of tree would impact me so greatly. Or maybe that was the point.

For the longest time I had no idea what it is I wanted to do with my life. As badly as I wanted to give an answer, I couldn’t. Time hasn’t changed much. I have gotten certificates and licences, I’ve gone to school and worked in a variety of fields. I am even currently on Medical career path. I’ve made a family, I’ve gotten married, I live a good life.

But most days I still wake up feeling unfulfilled. Not because I’m unhappy. I feel like with age I still haven’t figured myself out. Its almost like a dark cloud hanging over my head, pressuring me daily to finally feel that “Aha!” moment.

Who am I? What do I want? Where am I going with my life?

I have so many ideas for myself: I want to sell my artwork, I want to be a tattoo artist, I want to design something or other, I want to continue my medical career, I want to be one of those cute DIY everything moms, I want to be a sexy, “always makes her man feel attracted to her” wives that has a ton of other mom friends that actually like to hang out with me, I still want to be young and energetic about life, fit and active, I still want to travel, and so much more.

But why is it that I can’t seem to figure out how to make this all work? Where in the world is my “Aha!”? What the heck am I missing?

So I guess what this is all leading to is this………

I need to figure this out for myself, no one else will do it for me. I’m not sure what it is that I need, nor what it is that will stir the “living life to the fullest” moment inside of me but I am determined to figure this out.

Be it snorting a line of wasabi (totally using this to emphasize my point..not something I want to try), to painting a car, to helping a stranger, to checking things off my bucket list, to something as simple as learning a new recipe or biting my tongue when I want to blurt something out, to traveling somewhere new, finding something to do in my own home, or being brave enough to blog about my life…

I am inviting new beginnings to my life, I am tired of having no answer to write down. I want to feel like I’m living in the moment and I want to be happy everyday. No one can do this for me BUT ME.

I am ready to make life interesting and I will post everything here…the good the bad and the ugly. But every last bit of it will be the truth. Thoughts, emotions, experiences, opinions, trials and errors, dreams and failures. And hopefully along the way anyone who reads this will come to understand that life is what you make it, no matter how corny that sounds.

Here’s to hoping that this year I too will understand LIFE IS WHAT I MAKE OF IT!